A German electrical engineer who helped make MP3 players a reality has turned his attention to making “dumb devices” act smart.
Karlheinz Brandenburg, now a professor at Ilmenau University of Technology in Germany, is backing Perfect Stream technology that lets computing power in the Internet “cloud” do the thinking for simple devices.
“When I first met these guys it sounded crazy to me,” Brandenburg said while courting partners for Perfect Stream at a major Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that ended on Sunday in Las Vegas.
“But I have a fondness for crazy ideas because when we started MP3 it seemed crazy to everyone as well,” he said.
MP3 is now a nearly ubiquitous format used for digital content online and in mobile devices such as smartphones and music players.
The idea with Perfect Stream is to have digital video and audio tailored to individual tastes and delivered as a service to essentially any gizmo that can talk to the Internet.
Perfect Stream has proven itself in Germany and the company was at CES to license the technology to Internet service providers in the US.
“This technology works and now we are trying to internationalize it,” Nikolas Samios of Perfect Stream said.
Services can be programmed with a person’s preferred shows, news sources, music, Twitter feeds, or other Internet content and the data can be routed to digital picture frames, in-car navigation systems, feature phones, game consoles and more, Brandenburg said.
“It bridges the different technologies,” Samios said.
“These are all walled-garden devices that usually never talk to each other,” he said.
Personalized Internet streams can flow seamlessly to sophisticated online electronics or to “any kind of stupid phone, a US$50 phone with a prepaid plan,” Samios said.
The key is in processing digital content on servers “in the cloud” and then feeding it to gadgets that need only receive and decode the data, Brandenburg said.
Perfect Stream demonstrated the service on a series of devices, including an inexpensive Internet radio and a Philips TV with basic Internet connectivity.
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
Taiwanese Olympic badminton men’s doubles gold medalist Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) and his new partner, Chiu Hsiang-chieh (邱相榤), clinched the men’s doubles title at the Yonex Taipei Open yesterday, becoming the second Taiwanese team to win a title in the tournament. Ranked 19th in the world, the Taiwanese duo defeated Kang Min-hyuk and Ki Dong-ju of South Korea 21-18, 21-15 in a pulsating 43-minute final to clinch their first doubles title after teaming up last year. Wang, the men’s doubles gold medalist at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, partnered with Chiu in August last year after the retirement of his teammate Lee Yang
The Philippines yesterday criticized a “high-risk” maneuver by a Chinese vessel near the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) in a rare incident involving warships from the two navies. The Scarborough Shoal — a triangular chain of reefs and rocks in the contested South China Sea — has been a flash point between the countries since China seized it from the Philippines in 2012. Taiwan also claims the shoal. Monday’s encounter took place approximately 11.8 nautical miles (22km) southeast” of the Scarborough Shoal, the Philippine military said, during ongoing US-Philippine military exercises that Beijing has criticized as destabilizing. “The Chinese frigate BN 554 was
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer began talks with high-ranking Chinese officials in Switzerland yesterday aiming to de-escalate a dispute that threatens to cut off trade between the world’s two biggest economies and damage the global economy. The US delegation has begun meetings in Geneva with a Chinese delegation led by Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰), Xinhua News Agency said. Diplomats from both sides also confirmed that the talks have begun, but spoke anonymously and the exact location of the talks was not made public. Prospects for a major breakthrough appear dim, but there is
RSS